Growing Up in Mid-Century Beverly Hills

A lot has changed since Bobbie Fromberg drove her 1946 Chrysler Windsor to wearing a cashmere twinset with a matching plaid skirt that fell discreetly below her knees.

The boys wore their hair in ducktails and most dressed in a white T-shirt and Levis with the cuffs rolled up. But there were no short skirts or baggy pants on campus in those days.

“We had a strict dress code at Beverly Hills High back then,” said Fromberg, 76, who graduated in 1953. “I wore my hair in a ponytail most of the time and you weren’t even allowed to wear a scarf around your hair.”

In spite of the clothing restrictions, Beverly Hills seemed more carefree back then, Fromberg said.

After her family moved to the city in 1942, Fromberg entered the second grade at . It was wartime, so there were paper drives. Once a week she bought war bond stamps to fill up her book and trade in for war bonds.

Fromberg will never forget sitting in Maude Mae Redpath’s classroom in the third grade and seeing a soldier appear in the doorway.

“It was her son who had just got home from the war and when Mrs. Redpath saw him she started crying,” she said. “Pretty soon all the girls were crying and still today, just thinking about it, I'm getting tears in my eyes.”

Fromberg participated in Brownies and Girl Scouts at Beverly Vista, and sang lead in the seventh and eighth grade choirs. Every spring there was a Maypole dance in front of the school, during which one girl would be named the May Queen.

“You didn’t have to worry about walking to school alone,” Fromberg said. “I walked to school every day and never thought a thing of it.”

As she got older and moved on to high school, Fromberg would go to Stan’s Drive-in or Delores’ Drive-in, each on different ends of Wilshire Boulevard, to hang out with friends.

“We just sat in the car and drove the car hops crazy, sitting there ordering and eating while we took up one of their spots,” Fromberg said.

With parents in the entertainment industry, Fromberg has always loved movies. As a young girl, she often spent Saturday mornings at either the Warner Beverly Hills Theater to see Bugs Bunny or the Canon Theatre—then called The Hitching Post—to watch serials such as The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy. She worked at three Beverly Hills movie theaters between the ages of 15 and 19.

“When I got older, my mom and I would go see the latest Bette Davis or Joan Crawford movie on Friday night,” she said. “Then on Saturday night I would go to another movie on a date.”

While her peers were in love with teen heartthrobs like Tony Curtis, John Derek and Farley Granger, Fromberg actually got to meet the actors because her parents worked at Paramount.

“I wasn’t fazed by any of them, because they were always in our home,” she said. “They were just like regular people to me.”

Other favorite pastimes included hanging out at the beach and cruising down Hollywood Boulevard looking for cute soldiers on leave from the Korean War.

“There were a lot of servicemen there,” Fromberg said. “That’s what interested us girls.”

Fromberg loved growing up in Beverly Hills, and she still enjoys the town today. She especially likes that BHHS students are much more varied.

“We live in a diverse world, so kids need to learn to get along with all kinds of people,” she said.

Fromberg has also embraced modern technology. She emails and chats online, is on Facebook, uploads photos from her digital camera and talks to friends and family on her mobile phone.

“I like how I can get ahold of people real fast,” she said. “Everyone has a cellphone or I can write to them on Facebook.”

After all, Fromberg has five grandchildren to keep up with.

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